Sable Monroe

I knew Jamaica had a C5 form.

What I did not know was that the C5 form applied to me.

Those are two very different things.

For months, I have been preparing for my first trip back to Jamaica since 1989. I researched hotels. I researched drivers. I researched neighborhoods. I researched fruit. I researched whether I needed Jamaican dollars or if U.S. currency would be enough.

I did not research the C5.

Then one day, my social media feeds started yelling at me.

“Don’t forget your C5.”

“Make sure you complete your C5.”

“Fill out your C5 before you travel.”

I remember thinking, “Good advice for tourists.”

Then it slowly dawned on me that they were talking to me.

Apparently, after nearly forty years, I had somehow forgotten that I am also a tourist.

Not emotionally.

Not in my memories.

Not in the stories I write.

But on paper.

On paper, I am arriving from the United States just like everyone else.

My daughter and I sat down and completed the forms together because I knew exactly what would happen if I waited. I would be standing in an airport line, digging through emails, trying to remember passwords, and muttering profanity at my phone.

So we did it early.

The form itself was easy.

The realization was not.

I have traveled internationally before. Canada. Mexico. The Bahamas. Australia.

None of those trips felt strange.

Jamaica feels strange.

Australia was another country.

Canada was another country.

Mexico was another country.

Jamaica is the place where I was born.

Jamaica is where I attended school.

Jamaica is where I took a bus between Kingston and Montego Bay by myself as a child.

Jamaica is where my grandmother lived.

Jamaica is where so many of the stories on this blog began.

Yet there I was, completing the same entry form as everyone else.

For decades, I have referred to Jamaica as home.

Not my current home. Not my practical home. Baltimore holds that title now.

But the original home.

The starting point.

The place where the story began.

Somewhere along the way, I had unconsciously decided that forms like the C5 were for visitors.

Tourists.

People arriving from somewhere else.

I never stopped to consider that, administratively speaking, I am arriving from somewhere else.

The country where I was born now requires paperwork for me to return.

That is nobody’s fault.

It is not unfair.

It is not even unusual.

It is simply the reality of leaving a country as a child and returning as an adult decades later.

Still, there was something oddly emotional about it.

Not because of the form itself.

Because of what it represented.

The C5 reminded me that memory and reality are not always the same thing.

In my memory, Jamaica has always been waiting for me.

In reality, Jamaica moved forward while I was gone.

The roads changed.

The neighborhoods changed.

The people changed.

The country changed.

And so did I.

In a few days, I will board a plane and return to the island for the first time since 1989.

I am excited.

I am curious.

I am probably a little nervous.

But thanks to social media repeatedly yelling at me, at least I will arrive with the correct paperwork.

Apparently, even when you are going home, you still have to fill out the form.